


Censer

by Friedcheesemogu



Category: Smoke (Book) - Dan Vyleta
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:40:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21822307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Friedcheesemogu/pseuds/Friedcheesemogu
Summary: Thomas prefers to kiss Charlie in the dark.
Relationships: Thomas Argyle/Charlie Cooper/Livia Naylor
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Censer

**Author's Note:**

> So uh... "Smoke" by Dan Vyleta is about a 19th century England where every sin manifests as a visible "Smoke." There was a time before Smoke, although it's never entirely clear if Smoke (and its accompanying Soot) is a curse of some kind, or a mutation, or a disease, only that it has become what determines societal morals and is the basis for deciding for deciding who is common and sinful (the lower classes) and who is not (the rich), and therefore who should be in charge (the rich again, of course).
> 
> If that doesn't make a lot of sense, well... to be honest I loved how "Smoke" was written, but it's also kind of a mess with a lot of questions left unanswered and contradicting revelations; it wanders and doesn't always find its way back to the right path before it gets lost again.
> 
> But I really loved the relationship between Charlie Cooper (from a good family) and Thomas Argyle (who everyone assumes will end up as a murderer like his father), and eventually their relationship to and with Livia Naylor (the proper lady who comes to question everything around her). And after the book ended, I... wanted more of them, I guess. And there wasn't any. So this happened, and it might actually be the first (and probably last) fanfic for this book ever. >.>;;

He can’t say this out loud, ever. He does his best not to let it show that it’s even crossed his mind. It’s not fair to any of them to play favorites, especially when Livia already has the advantage on him in Charlie’s arms having been alive for the first kiss, the quiet conversations, Thomas an untouchable closeness away, trying not to die. 

But there’s something in Thomas that has to confess in the dark, that place where everything is only touch and drowning in each other’s scent. 

It was always Charlie, it was always going to _be_ Charlie, no matter what, no matter who, no matter how. Thomas wanted him and would always want him, if he was going to turn out rotten, if he was going to end on the gallows, his own sins scraped off his dead tongue, then at least... at least if he had Charlie, it would be worth it.

-

“I love you,” he said, and he couldn’t taste their smoke, if there was any to be had.

“I love you,” he said, because he didn’t know if there would be a way to come back from this, from Julius, from the elation and the horror and the thought of “freedom,” finally, after all this time. Freedom to finally be everything they always told him he would become, everyone but-

_Charlie._

Livia kisses them in the light now, but Thomas prefers to kiss Charlie in the dark where Smoke is only a taste and they must find each other by touch alone, like being in the mines but without the fever.

Without that fever, at least. He’s had many since then. A lifetime of sickness in a matter of days, different flavors of every sin he ever thought of thinking about, and then, eventually, the ones he never did. 

Livia, the taste of cigarettes on her lips. There’s no need for them anymore, but he thinks she rather likes them, likes the way it feels to still be breaking a rule even after they’ve all been unwritten. There is a part of her that will always look at him with the anger of realizing her feelings for him despite Charlie and for Charlie, but it passes.

“I suppose it’s selfish sometimes,” she says, fingers dancing through the gray wisps above the bed. “But it’s a riddle I never want to solve, something not even an angel could tell me.” 

She smiles. Thomas remembers the last time they saw Livia’s mother, a broken prophet saying “You have never really been in love,” and it was meant for her, but all three of them heard it.

What would she say, after all of this?

-

There is some understanding that it wasn’t supposed to be like this. There should have been some sort of duel, some competition between them: two men, one woman, trouble, a sour compromise waiting to happen.

“Charlie,” Thomas moans, knowing that Livia can hear, hoping she hears, knowing that she’ll bask in her own smoke and listen.

It’s hard to think of them separately sometimes. Together they started a new world, and together they will live in it, yes, yes, and yes. This is a promise.

“I love you,” he said, and he meant it. He would die for them. He would kill for them. He would go mad for them and they for him, just like Charlie said; if it ends, they end together.

-

When Charlie seems so strangely dismayed, so shocked by what they’ve done and how good it is, how real it is, how much he wanted and still wants, that all Thomas can do is quietly urge “Yes,” and all Livia can do is confirm “Yes,” until Charlie himself, tilting his head into the Smoke finally responds “Yes” with all the breath he needs to live. They did it together, they chose it together, Livia will never let them forget and Thomas is grateful because there has always been something in Charlie’s melancholy that made him ache in the parts everyone assumed were ruined forever.

He understands it now, moreso. Somewhat. Inasmuch as he can, he thinks.The Soot can mean one thing, the Smoke another, it depends on something beyond sin that he had never considered before. 

Charlie has said in his arms that he wonders if Julius was everything they feel in reverse; his poison their cure, his descent what made them rise.

“I think in a way, Julius loved you,” Livia observed once. “The worst way, the way that they always told us made Smoke to begin with. To make us reject it out of hand without ever asking what about it was so frightening.”

“You should be frightened, we all should be,” Thomas insisted, because it was a difficult day when Livia was too smart and Charlie too beautiful; he couldn’t look at them. “It destroyed him. It could still destroy us.” He himself is not immune to doubt.

That night none of them said “yes.” Smoke hung around them acrid and stinging.

In the morning, they all were gray with sorrow, with longing, with need. Without speaking, they left Julius to die a third time and fell into each other’s arms.

It was, after all, because of Julius, that Thomas had told them “I love you.” The cure was in the disease.

-

“I thought I was going to lose you,” he whispers, running his hands up Charlie’s slick back in the dark. “When I lost myself. It was going to happen and I needed to tell you, both of you-”

Charlie takes his face in both hands, the motion that Thomas thinks might have saved his life, and speaks into his mouth, tasting like a fire under a mountain that never stops burning.

“So did we.” His tongue is lazy but focused along Thomas’ lower lip. “So do we, and so do you, because I know you’re still afraid.”

Thomas makes a noise in his throat -and this is why he likes kissing Charlie in the dark, because otherwise the blue fog of lovelorn embarrassment and terror would cover them completely, they wouldn’t be able to see and it wouldn’t be a choice- pulls Charlie closer to bite at his neck. The sound Charlie gladly gives up in response makes him feel like a monster devouring goodness in the night because Charlie _is_ good. Charlie would have let him go to Livia, let Livia go to him, Charlie would have given them both up in order to keep them, a truth that’s hard to deal with so Thomas leaves marks on his neck because the words will never seem like enough.

-

"You know, right?" Thomas asks in the aftermath.

"I know," Charlie says, placing his hand over Thomas' heart. "I can taste it, smell it. I can feel it every time I breathe." 

"Does Livia know, do you think?"

"Thomas," Charlie's voice betrays that he knows Thomas is being deliberately obtuse, too stubborn to not need this reassurance. "Of course she does."

He needs to hear it, though. In the dark, in their dark, like the Smoke of midnight conversations in a silent dormitory. He might have known then. He should have known then. It was always going to be Charlie.

"What will she say?" Thomas is afraid of this more than madness, more than death. They hold his world together, the familiar darkness and taste of Smoke devastating and beyond fatal if he didn't have them. But there was always going to be an _always,_ because there always is. And the always that he keeps in the dark, the part of him that Charlie never feared, is that it was going to be this.

"Thomas," says Charlie softly, "You don't need to ask."

"Charlie, please."

"She will say 'yes.'"

Charlie's mouth is the only absolution Thomas has ever trusted or believed in, so he makes himself inhale their mingled sins and once again, can't help himself.

"I love you," he says, because it is all he can say, and really, after everything, it's the only thing that truly matters and will continue to matter as the world explodes into new kinds of light and shadows, night, day, night again, smoke.

"Yes," Charlie pulls Thomas' face closer so he can say it directly against his lips, they can share it like a forgotten candy that was never as sweet as this truth. "It will always be 'yes.'"

**Author's Note:**

> And now back to pretending I'm working on the fic I'm supposed to be writing. >.>;;


End file.
